After listening to a church service on Mother's Day 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd proposed that a special day should be set aside to honor fathers. Inspired by her father, a Civil War veteran who was a single parent with six children living in Spokane, Washington, she initially suggested June 5, which was the anniversary of his death. But delays in preparing for the holiday caused the date to move to June 19, 1910. Dodd drew up a petition recommending adoption of a national father's day. The Spokane Ministerial Association and the local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) supported it.

The idea of a Father's Day gained support from people such as William Jennings Bryan, a gifted orator and three-time United States Democratic nominee for president, and began to spread across America. It was Calvin Coolidge who recommended the day as a national holiday in 1924. President Lyndon Johnson declared the third Sunday of June as Father's Day with a presidential proclamation in 1966, although it was not officially recognized until the presidency of Richard Nixon in 1972.